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Judger Parker, 5/4/19

I’m trying to remember exactly to what degree Sam and/or Abbey’s fingerprints would be on any aspect of the Great Norton Caper (in which, just to remind you, Judge Parker Emeritus helped April’s dad fake his death) that’s about to be revealed in a tell-all book, and honestly? I’m not sure that there are any! Which is great — for Sam. He can just quietly hang up the phone and then go back to planning how to charge the rubes $250 a night on AirBnB to stay in Marie’s old servant’s hovel ($175 if they just want to sleep in the horse barn), and start practicing saying “Judge Parker? Judge Parker? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Mark Trail, 5/4/19

God bless Mark Trail for dedicating an entire day’s strip for establishing how theatrically sleepy all its characters are! The only one missing is JJ. I certainly hope come Monday he gets a whole strip to himself to stretch ostentatiously.

Gil Thorp, 5/4/19

Not gonna lie, folks: I personally relate to few people in the comics more than the guy in panel one, who tried to come up with something complimentary to say to a pretty, popular girl on the softball team and ended up blurting out “Way to … mash … the ball” as he awkwardly high-fives her in the hallway. He’s gonna be thinking about that for years to come.

Hi and Lois, 5/4/19

Hi, she’s … she’s right there, man

I’m pretty sure she can hear you

Not cool

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/19

Hey, remember last year in Crankshaft when a poor little girl was buying a book on “layaway,” a few pennies at a time, from Lilian’s unlicensed bookstore, so Crankshaft bought it for her, but she turned out to be a little grifter running a scam? I guess “people will respond to basic acts of human decency by attempting to profit off your kindness” is a Funkyverse thing now, which has a different kind of depressing valence than “the universe will snuff out your happiness with arbitrary tragedy.” Not sure where the obvious anger simmering under today’s strip is coming from, unless it’s based on the belief that there’s some kind of lucrative secondary market for signed Funky Winkerbean art, which I can assure you there is not.

Dick Tracy, 5/1/19

Ugh, the whole point of Minit Mysteries is that there supposed to be quick and simple and not … full of just endless text about small town administrative terminology and the minutia of the local criminal syndicate’s org chart. I’m not going to read this, you hear me? I’m not. I’m getting older, I only have a limited amount of brain space anymore, and I need to focus it on what brings me joy.

Gil Thorp, 5/1/19

See, I accidentally learned that the town in Dick Tracy has a “president” instead of a mayor and it made me forget the name of the the reporter who isn’t adversarial towards the Thorps and all they stand for. I want to say it’s … Marcie? Is that right? Anyway, I mostly am here to point out that Marty Moon would never let Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp go off the record to say “Yeah, I’m definitely surprised this team isn’t doing as badly as I 100% expected them to do.” Of course, she also went off the record to say “There’s a swagger and spirit to this team that’s infectious,” which is like a perfect coach sound bite, so really Mimi’s whole media relations strategy is pretty muddled.

The Phantom, 5/1/19

The Phantom is not exactly known for its verisimilitude, but I do absolutely believe that the shadowy guerilla warriors guarding terrorist compounds deep in the African desert spend more time than you’d think dicking around on their phones.

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Six Chix, 4/15/19

Happy Tax Day, everybody! Six Chix is here to remind you that even beloved cultural icons like the Easter Bunny — seen here with a stack of W-9s, 1099s, and 1040 Schedule Cs, denoting his freelancer status — currently live in the precarious world of the gig economy, where traditional labor protections cannot reach.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/15/19

I was going to do a bit about Hootin’ Holler’s place in a sad, post-apocalyptic universe, based on the local post office’s affiliation with the “Newnited States,” but then I remembered that I already did that back in 2010, so instead I’ll just point out that the IRS considers income from barter and criminal activity to be taxable, so maybe Snuffy shouldn’t be quite so relaxed.

Crock, 4/15/19

Speaking of repeated jokes, I was about to say that I was willing to put aside my feud with Crock and admit that I found this strip unironically funny, but then I remembered I did the same thing when it ran last May. I guess I’ve just validated Crock’s decision to run the few funny strips in its vast archives every eleven months or so, because people will enjoy them and probably won’t remember that they’re repeats unless they really dedicate some thought to it.

Gil Thorp, 4/15/19

Oh, I guess this Gil Thorp plotline is about how student-athletes should stay well-rounded and have outside hobbies, like knitting or blogging. Girl student-athletes, I should specify; obviously boy student-athletes need to dedicate all their energy into Mudlark athletics in a desperate attempt to be in the tiny percentage of high school students recruited into elite collegiate athletic programs, so they can dedicate all their energy during college into sports so they can be in the tiny percentage of elite college athletes who end up in the pros.

Mary Worth, 4/15/19

I like Toby’s big smile as she announces to Mary that “poems can be cribbed off the Internet,” like she’s figured out how to beat Big MFA at their own game. She can’t tell Ian, of course, as it would make him realize his whole career path of sharing the wonders of literature with undergrads is a sham, but she’s gotta tell someone.